Periodontal Disease – Chronic and Progressive, but Lacking Symptoms

One of the largest obstacles to treatment acceptance for periodontal treatment is lack of symptoms. This is unfortunate as the disease is chronic and progressive. Unfortunately, patients do not always realize that bleeding gums or early changes in bone loss are early indicators to future tooth loss.

The dental profession is slowly doing better in explaining this to patients. Medicine has many parallels. Patients sometimes have progressive chronic high cholesterol and think nothing about treating it early. Why would patients want to lose teeth because of perio disease? Probably because we have done a poor job of explaining it…

Science Daily published an article: Severe periodontitis: Sixth most prevalent health condition in the world. Below is a link to the article and the research findings.

Summary: There is an enormous public health challenge posed by severe periodontitis and are a microcosm of the epidemiologic transition to non-communicable diseases occurring in many countries, experts say. In 2010, severe periodontitis was the sixth most prevalent condition in the world affecting 743 million people worldwide. Between 1990 and 2010, the global age-standardized prevalence of severe periodontitis was static at 11.2%.